Friday, October 14, 2011

Almond-Crusted French Toast with Poached Pineapple

Last Friday, I posted about a delicious recipe for poached pineapple flavored with white wine and rosemary. This tasty pineapple dish is great for dessert, but since it's fruit based, it's also great for breakfast. I'll let you in on a secret - while I love maple flavor in baked goods, I'm not a huge fan of pouring maple syrup over my pancakes, waffles, and French toast - I'll almost always go for yogurt, applesauce, or some other sort of cooked fruit instead. Here, I paired poached pineapple and a generous amount of the pineapple syrup produced by the recipe with custard-y, crunchy French toast. I love the addition of almonds here,which add a great nutty flavor and some textural contrast. And while of course it's great to use a "nicer" loaf of bread if you've got some on hand, the French toast worked very well with a regular whole wheat sandwich loaf. One thing to note about this recipe is that there's no sugar in the custard, which allows you to enjoy a sugar-y topping without going into sweetness overload. If you prefer your French toast with just butter, you might want to add some sugar to the custard.

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, and set up a wire rack on a cookie sheet.
2. Whisk together the eggs, salt, vanilla, milk, and cinnamon until well combined. Pour the almonds onto a separate plate.
3. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat and spray with oil.
4. Soak the bread in the egg mixture until soaked through, flipping once (this will take more or less time depending on the bread you use - supermarket bread goes really quick, so be careful or it will fall apart!). Then dip one side into the almonds and place the bread into the hot pan. Cook until browned, then flip and cook the second side until browned. Transfer the cooked French toast to the wire rack and place in the preheated oven until all the French toast is cooked.
5. Repeat with the other pieces of bread.
6. Top with warm poached pineapple and drizzle over some of the syrup.